Help! XP won't get past longin screen!!!

[pistola]

Im not sure if this is a hardware issue or a OS issue, but im posting it here.

My dad's laptop, HP Pavillion xt412, will not boot past the XP login screen. I try to boot in safe mode, same thing get to where the login would be and stops. No HD activity, nothing. Any insite on what it could be or what it is? I was thinking I should just drop a fresh install on it, but id want to do that as a last resort.

Thats as far as it gets. HELP!

 

[The Bryophyte]

the first two things to try are a "chkdsk /r" and a repair install. For both, boot off the windows cd to do it...since you can't get into windows at all.

If you don't know how to do them, post that and I'll give detailed instructions. Neither process should lose or damage files, so don't worry about that.

 

[pistola]

Im gonna try that tonight. But being that its a HP, it deosn't come with the windows cds, but it does come with restore cds, im hoping that will work. If not im gonna install a fresh version of windows, boot that, recover the data they need and start over. Thanks.